April 1930 issue ~ cover art by J.W. Schlaikjer

April 1930 issue

better image than previously posted

cover art by J. W. Schlaikjer

~ Ramon Decolta (Raoul Whitfield), “Red Hemp”, Jo Gar, 3rd of 24 stories in BM, reprinted in West of Guam: The Complete Cases of Jo Bar (Altus Press, 2013)

~ J. J. Des Ormeaux, “Murderer’s Night”, ‘modern Western; 1st-person narrator,’ 1st of 5 stories in BM, (pseudonym of Forrest Rosaire)

~ Dashiell Hammett, “The Cyclone Shot”, Ned Beaumont, 2nd of 4 stories that will go together to make up The Glass Key (published 1931), 42nd of 45 stories in BM

~ Nels Leroy Jorgensen, “Your Play, Gentlemen”, 13th of 32 with Stuart “Black” Burton, ‘square-shooting gambler from the Southwest, often entangled with the law’, ‘Burton in NYC, features Kyoto Kara, a Japanese’, 17th of 39 stories in BM

~ Frederick L. Nebel, “Wise Guy”, 10th of 37 with Captain Steve MacBride and local reporter Kennedy ’& the usual company’, reprinted in Winter Kill: Complete Cases of MacBride & Kenney, v.2 (Altus, 2013), 22 of 67 stories in BM

~ Raoul [Fauconnier] Whitfield, “Killers’ Show”, Mal Ourney, last of 5 stories, ‘The Crime Breeders’, presented as separate stories rather than conventional serial’, published in hardcover in 1930 by Knopf as Green Ice, 39th of 67 stories in BM [see also 24 stories as Ramon Decolta]

©Seattle Mystery Bookshop

1978 Random House first edition hardcover

1978 Random House first edition hardcover, a modern classic

cover illustration by Stan Zagorowoski

1st novel with private eye C.W. Sughrue with begins with the masterful and oft-quoted sentence: “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”